To Flicker and Die
by Kaelir of Lorien
Summary: 'I need your help.' It is the night before the Fall. The night before the day that will change everything. Mycroft is faced with a terrible responsibility as he watches his brother set in motion the events that will precede his own downfall. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **A dark moment of a piece, a glimpse into the night before the Fall, when Sherlock must admit that he can't do what he has to alone. Once again, Mycroft's character draws me in and compels me to explore the relationship between himself and Sherlock. Your thoughts are appreciated, as always, and I thank you beforehand for taking a look at this. :)

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**To Flicker and Die**

"_I need your help."_

Mycroft Holmes had heard those words from those lips only three times in his adult life. Three times. Three requests, three reluctant agreements to lower the bridge, to put up the foil, to acknowledge something less than omniscience and self-sufficiency.

He remembered them well, those three moments when he thought for the briefest second of longing that they—brothers—were still connected by something more than blood. The problem was, he could never be sure. They were the memories he mused over on dark days, when he was alone in his study with his hand around a glass of scotch and his normally-pristine jacket folded once in half and draped carelessly across the back of a high, elegant chair. He thought, and he wondered, and always came to the conclusion that he was missing something, something vital, something that meant more than what the sum of their relationship came out to be whenever he added it up. But for all that his mind could accomplish, the total never really changed.

Cynically, Mycroft was inclined to believe that in itself was a sign. _Don't try to deduce him_, it said. _Don't try to look at him in the way you look at the rest of the world. _And, more than that—

_Never attempt to analyse someone whose rightful place is not in your head, but in your heart_, it told him;_ for there are boundaries that cannot and should not be crossed, and to so deliberately mingle logic and emotion is to risk losing both when you look again at that person._

This he had learned, and this, he could not deny, had proved its validity, on a number of occasions that had only served in the end to deliver up to him a faint tinge of embarrassment that he was not at all anxious to repeat. That was the problem with his brother—the problem, he supposed, with being close to anyone. They knew you. They saw beyond those normal barriers you threw up with long practice to keep the average mind at bay, or even the un-average one. They could see because you had let them see, and because you, in your infinite capacity for long-range planning, had invited them into your heart and expected they would look without touching.

Sherlock, of course, went about it slightly differently. He drowned emotion in a flood of cold, merciless analysis, as though he could pretend that he really was invulnerable to such base instincts of humanity. It was only in times of crisis that he deigned to ask anything of Mycroft, because that meant one point lost and transferred to the other side. Mycroft's side.

Still, he had done it when he had to. Three times before he had asked for help, and Mycroft, recognising desperation even under the wrapping of indifference that Sherlock had coated it in, had given it.

But this was different.

Never had he heard those words so bleak, so heavy with darkened purpose.

This was _wrong._

And as Mycroft let his mobile slip from his fingers onto the gleaming surface of his study table, he found himself wishing for only two things: that the climax of the deadly game of James Moriarty was not about to made possible by his own doing; and that he had imagined the faint tremor in Sherlock's words, the soft hesitation, as though his brother's voice were about to break.

Sherlock, however, was composed when he arrived; except for a darkening glimmer in his eyes and a marginally tighter set to his mouth, there was little evidence on his features to show that he had stretched out his hand to his brother, his last resort, and that he was only hours away from the point of no return. Mycroft said nothing, his own face impassive, and in his curt gesture that allowed Sherlock to enter, there was neither question nor reproof. Matters had already gone too far for that.

They sat down together in a small upstairs room, where the air was heavy and their faces were lit only by a single lamp jutting from the panelled wall above the mantelpiece. There was a bookcase, and a square table set on four carved legs that curved upward like lotus columns. Though muffled, the movement of their chairs against the soft carpet still rang loud in Mycroft's ears, and he knew it was because he was simply waiting now—for a cough, a swallow, an intake of breath that would tell him Sherlock was ready to speak. When the silence stretched on, however, he began to suspect that a prompt was needed.

"You asked for my help."

"Yes."

The reply was barely a breath of an answer—low, hoarse, and unwilling. Mycroft folded his hands slowly on the table and looked across it to his brother. Sherlock had loosened the scarf draped under his long coat, and with his pale throat exposed above the grey-blue fabric, he suddenly looked very vulnerable.

Mycroft watched him, very carefully. "What do you need?"

"To disappear."

For a moment, it seemed that was all; but then Sherlock's lips parted again, reluctantly, and in the second preceding his brother's response, Mycroft felt something twist harshly, despairingly, inside his chest.

"I need... to die."

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_Dark, I know, but I'm quite pleased with how this came out. Please let me know if you feel the same! Leave a review on your way out, if you'd be so kind. :)_


End file.
